


of a mentionable shade

by coloredink



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, Pointless, Post-Reichenbach, Sherlock's Hair
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-16
Updated: 2013-06-16
Packaged: 2017-12-15 03:38:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/844859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coloredink/pseuds/coloredink
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You make a horrid blonde, you know."</p>
            </blockquote>





	of a mentionable shade

Sherlock was playing the violin again.

The flat was always filled with music now. John understood the inclination, he supposed, but it meant he had to stomp louder as he came down the stairs, and he had to be sure to slam the bathroom door a little when he went in or out of it, in order to be heard over the perpetual song of the strings.

But it was worth it. Everything was worth it.

John paused on his way to the kitchen. Sherlock was standing by the windows, his blue dressing gown draped around his shoulders, violin tucked under his chin. His eyes were closed and he swayed a little as he drew the bow across the strings in a mournful minor key. John swallowed.

Sherlock stopped, suddenly, letting his arms fall. He turned his head to the side, but did not quite look over his shoulder. "What."

"Nothing." John took a step back. "Just. Wondering if you were going to do something about your hair."

"My hair?" Sherlock turned to look at John properly. His hair was longer than John could ever remember it being, and the early afternoon sunlight turned it the colour of chaff.

"Yes," said John. "You make a horrid blonde, you know."

"Hm." Sherlock turned back to his music stand. He picked up a pencil and made some notation or other on the blank staff paper in front of him. John slipped away to make his toast and tea.

\-----

"John! I need you!"

John all but flung himself over the banister in his haste to get downstairs. When he arrived in the front hall, his knees trembling with exertion and adrenaline, it was to find Sherlock calmly shrugging out of his coat.

"What?" John took a deep breath and straightened his back. "What is it?"

"Hold this." Sherlock proffered a paper bag. John took it and stood whilst Sherlock finished taking off his coat. Sherlock did not seriously call him down here just to hold a bag for him? But when Sherlock had hung up his coat, he merely stood and looked at John, and John realised he was supposed to look in the bag.

It was the sort of understated paper bag that one only receives from high-end shops, pale green with silver handles and silver block characters on the front. Inside the bag were two slender boxes with identical portraits of a smooth-skinned woman with raven hair, with small, tasteful lettering on the sides. There was also a bowl, a long-handled brush, and a comb.

John looked up. "What's this?"

Sherlock raised his eyebrows.

"Well, all right, it's hair dye," said John. "But--"

"I could have got it done in a salon," said Sherlock, "but I thought you'd like to be involved."

Silence swelled fat and heavy between them, pressing against the walls. John couldn't deny it. He would have been incensed, had Sherlock walked into the flat with darkened hair, as if nothing had happened, and John would have murdered the stylist who touched Sherlock's hair a thousand times in his dreams. No reason. Irrational. Sherlock would scorn it.

But Sherlock had purchased the hair dye and brought it home.

"All right," said John. "Do you want to do it now?"

"No time like the present," said Sherlock, as he stepped out of his shoes.

\-----

Sherlock's hair was clean and damp, the dye's components were mixed in the plastic bowl (and why couldn't they just pre-mix the components, John wondered), and Sherlock had changed out of his fine button-up shirt into one of the ratty t-shirts that he wore on his off days. And yet, John hesitated, brush in hand. Sherlock was sitting in one of the kitchen chairs, positioned in the middle of the bathroom.

"Well, don't be all day about it," Sherlock said. "This is taking too long as it is."

"I'd think you'd want me to be more careful," John said. "It's _your_ hair, after all."

"You're not so hesitant with sutures, and that's my _skin_ ," Sherlock sad. "It's not surgery. Just slap it on."

The instructions had recommended starting with the roots, but stressed that he stay away from the scalp, which seemed to be conflicting directives. John dabbed the stuff on gingerly at first, staining the fingertips of his gloves with sooty black as he moved Sherlock's hair around to get at the rest of it. A few minutes into it, he realised that was what the long handle of the comb was for, and he cursed himself for his idiocy. Sherlock, for his part, was quiet; almost too quiet. There wasn't even the tapping of the little keys on his phone. It was like he wasn't there, though his scalp was under John's hands.

"Who did your hair before?" John asked, once the nausea threatened to overtake him.

"Her," said Sherlock.

"Her?"

John couldn't see Sherlock's face, but he could feel Sherlock stiffen just a little. He finished applying the dye all the way down to the tips of the hairs around Sherlock's ear before saying, "You can't mean Irene Adler."

Sherlock did not reply.

John took a deep breath and counted to three before letting it out again. "She's. She's dead. Sherlock."

Sherlock did not reply.

John set the bowl and brush down on the counter. He turned around and made sure that he was breathing, conscious of the rise and fall of his chest. He let his hands curl into fists, a little sweaty inside the gloves. "Is. Is anyone else alive that I should know about? Moriarty?"

"No, Moriarty is quite dead."

"Are you _sure?_ " John whipped around, teeth bared, not that Sherlock could see. "Because, I mean, it seems that no one stays dead around here." He stopped with the tip of his tongue between his teeth. Sherlock sat still and inviolable, half of his head dark as pitch, the other half still pale.

"John." Sherlock's voice was quiet and even. "Finish the job."

"No." John hooked his thumb underneath the edge of his glove. "I shouldn't. I should just. Leave. God." _See how you like it_ , he thought, even though he knew it was childish.

"John." Sherlock took a deep breath and let it out again. "Please."

Three years ago, John thought, Sherlock would have shouted by now. He might have waved his arms. He would have insulted John's intelligence in that rapid-fire way he had. He still did those things--he'd done that just yesterday, as a matter of fact--but he did not do them now.

"All right." John turned around and picked up the bowl and brush again. "All right."

\-----

John checked the instructions again, once he was satisfied that Sherlock's hair was evenly coated with dye. It said to leave the dye in for 30 minutes. John checked his watch. "Do you want me to bring you your phone?"

"Yes, please."

Please twice in an hour. This must be some sort of record. John fetched Sherlock's phone from his coat pocket and brought it into the bathroom. Sherlock clicked through it with an absent sort of air before letting it fall into his lap, screen dark. Not even thirty seconds. That wasn't even long enough to check his mail.

John contemplated fetching another chair from the kitchen, but that seemed absurd, and besides, he wasn't sure he could fit two chairs in their bathroom. He perched on the lip of the bath instead. "So, Irene did your hair. And then, what, you sat up all night talking about boys? Or girls," he added.

"It wasn't like that."

"I'm sure." John laced his fingers together and rested his chin on them, his elbows on his knees. He'd gotten a little bit of dye on his wrists, but it would shed.

Sherlock shifted in his seat. John could see his profile in the mirror, from this position. Sherlock looked his usual impassive self. "She did my hair at first. Then I did it myself, after, when she wasn't there."

"Mmm." John tried to imagine Sherlock in a dingy hostel bathroom, touching up his roots with a bottle from the chemist. It made him smile. "It looks pretty good. Looked. Not that I'm an expert, mind."

"But I am," Sherlock said, with such gravitas that John actually laughed. Sherlock turned his head to look at John, frowning. "What?"

"Nothing." John giggled.

"It's clearly not _nothing_ ," Sherlock snapped. "Out with it."

"No, it's really--" John waved his hand, still laughing. He wasn't sure how he'd been so angry just a few minutes ago, and practically doubling over in laughter now. His cheeks hurt. "It's really nothing."

This seemed to make Sherlock even more incensed, which in turn only made John laugh harder, until he had to leave the room.

\-----

Sherlock showered again, to wash the excess dye out of his hair. John stood outside the door and wished that he were there. Not in the shower--it was hardly large enough for two grown men. Rather, Sherlock would have his head bent over the tub, and John would use a bowl to rinse the dye out. Grey water would swirl down the drain, and John would work his fingers through Sherlock's hair, this time without gloves, and he would pour water over Sherlock's head, over and over again, until all the dye was gone, and then Sherlock would open his eyes and look up at him.

\-----

The bathroom door released a puff of steam as Sherlock stepped out, clad in his dressing gown, with a towel slung around his neck. His feet left damp footprints on the floor. His hair was jet black and shiny.

A bit of water dripped off Sherlock's hair, and Sherlock ran his towel over it again. He did not take his eyes off John. "Well?" he asked.

The new colour was, if anything, actually a little _too_ dark; John didn't remember Sherlock's hair being quite so black. His eyes seemed even more alien and pale in contrast. But it would fade a bit, and meanwhile Sherlock's natural colour would grow in. In six months it would be as if nothing had changed.

"It'll do," said John.


End file.
